• Xinyi Chen, Yi Yang, Min Huang, Lili Liu, Xianxiang Zhang, Jing Xu, Shaoqing Geng, Bo Han, Jiangfeng Xiao, and Yanyun Wan.
• Department of Pathology, Qingdao Central Hospital, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Qingdao University Medical College, Qingdao, China.
• J. Med. Virol. 2020 Sep 1; 92 (9): 1572-1579.

AbstractCoronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) broke out in Wuhan, Hubei, China in December 2019. Tens thousands of people have been infected with the disease. Our aim was to distinguish severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)-positive patients from SARS-CoV-2-negative patients. We retrospectively compared the data of COVID-19 patients with those of suspected and confirmed SARS-CoV-2-negative patients (control patients). There were 78 COVID-19 patients and 26 control patients, whose median ages were significantly different (P = .001). The percentage of COVID-19 patients admitting exposure to Wuhan was obviously higher than that of control patients (X2  = 29.130; P < .001). Fever and cough appeared more frequently in COVID-19 patients than in the control patients. The routine blood workup parameters of COVID-19 patients did not change much and their mean counts were in the normal range. There were 38.5% of control patients had higher procalcitonin (PCT) levels than 0.5 ng/mL, which was significantly higher than that percentage of COVID-19 patients (X2  = 22.636; P < .05), and COVID-19 patients were also more likely to have decreased or normal urea and creatinine levels than control patients (X2  = 24.930, 8.480; P < .05).Younger age, exposure to Wuhan, fever, cough, and slight changes in routine blood workup parameters, urea and creatinine were important features discriminating COVID-19 from control patients. Slightly increased, but far less than 0.5 ng/mL, PCT levels also differentiated COVID-19 patients from control patients.© 2020 Wiley Periodicals LLC.

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